But what is interesting is that fellow staff members purposely go after me on occasion because they know my standpoint.  They will do so with social issues, theological issues, and political issues.  I’m regularly accused for the actions and statements of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry.  Mind you, I’ve never met these people, and I really don’t know much about them.  I could care less about politics at this point in my life.

The other day, a teacher–a very vocal Buddhist–went on attack for no reason, telling me that she was sure that there was no God when she was 7, and that there is nothing after this life, but that her energy, not her conscious, will be reincarnated when she dies.  She boldly complained that there was no God and that science proves it.  And that my faith was useless.

Do you know what I did to spur on that remark?  NOTHING.  My office colleague organizes our school facility for a church that meets in our school on the weekends, and THAT set off the teacher, who addressed me because she knows that I’m a conservative Christian–even though I NEVER address my faith with her.

I don’t feel too persecuted nor offended.  People in this world are regularly killed for their faith in Jesus Christ, and this teacher spouts off about stuff like this all the time.  She’s lost any impact because she does so.

Meanwhile, what would happen if a Christian were to go on attack mode of people of other belief structures?

Guy #1: “That music at that church makes no sense.”

Guy #2: “What do you mean?”

Guy #1: “Take that last song…”Our God is greater, our God is stronger…there’s only one God.  What in the world are they saying?”

Guy #2: “It was a good sounding song, but I guess you’re right.”

Well, Guy #1 WAS right.  The Chris Tomlin song says, “Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God You are higher than any other.”  As Christians, we believe in one triune God, and that there are no other gods.  None.  So our God is great.  He’s strong.  He’s higher than anything else in creation.  But he isn’t “greater” than other gods because there are none.

I understand that we need to find catchy ways to write tunes that we can sing in church–fine.  But let them pass theologically.

Now, could you say that Tomlin is reflecting back to the Old Testament when God’s chosen people were (sinning by) worshiping other gods?  Sure.  But the song doesn’t say that–and it’s contemporary worship.  Let’s make sure that the music we’re using in our churches actually reflects the theology we believe.

I’ve had a similar rant about another Chris Tomlin song entitled, “Here I am to Worship,” which doubly bothers me because first it’s all about “I” and “me” rather than about “God,” and second because it says, “I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross.”  No–I think we DO understand what the cost was–that causes us to place faith in the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  I may never experience the punishment my sin deserves because of that cross, so I’ll never live through that–if that is what “know” means, and we’ll have all eternity with which to thank Jesus Christ for dying on the cross for our sins.

So do you know what I do when our church sings these songs?  I stop singing during these verses.  Just like I do when a church reads the Nicene Creed and everyone says, “On the third day, he descended into Hell.”

I know…crazy evangelical conservative.  I’m really not too crazy, though.

As a person who has been “raised” in the contemporary church, I find this video to be a number of things: entertaining, surprising, and sad.  I’m not sure what the original intent of the video was, but if you attend any church that is purposely “contemporvant” (Contemporary & Relevant), you’ve seen some of these characteristics.

So here are my scattered thoughts:

• We shouldn’t be in the process of mocking any form of Christian worship, as long as it is honest and gives glory to God.
• Cookie-cutter Christianity has always been the case…in the 1950s, in 2011.  Churches want to reach the unchurched, and they want to do so with contemporary and relevant methods and music.
• That said, every church shouldn’t model its ministries off of other ministries.  Innovation and relevance can be found within the walls of any church.
• There are churches that are not “contemporary” or “relevant” that are being used for God’s glory, too.
• We need to make sure that our churches are not so “seeker sensitive” that they are also places of “no growth.”
• Churches, when healthy, should be multi-generational.  Generational churches either need to become multi-generational or they will eventually burn out.
• Churches should be focusing on the actual meaning of the music they are singing and making sure that the lyrics are theologically sound.  We should make sure that God is at the center of music we use to worship Him and avoid songs all about “me” or “I” unless the purpose of the songs are confessional or based on making a commitment.
• And if we’re in the process of perfuming gimmicks instead of serving God, we need to stop what we’re doing.

Well, our unions support the Democratic candidate, and since my wife and I are both union members–by occupation–we are receiving a huge amount of contact in support of the Democratic candidate.

Specifically, we get at least one phone call a day.  We get at least one mailing (sometimes up to four) a day.  And ten minutes ago, we’ve had the second person come to our door to encourage us to vote.  That’s right…they come FROM THE UNION with MY ADDRESS to MY HOME to personally TELL ME to vote for THEIR CANDIDATE.  They read my name off a sheet.  Ugh.   I’ve asked, on a number of occasion, to be removed from mailing lists and calling lists.  This seems to have no effect whatsoever.  Leave us alone.

Truthfully, we’re not voting for the Democrat, and were there another option, we probably wouldn’t vote for the Republican, either.

But enough is enough.  If the CANDIDATE comes to our house, we’ll be happy to visit with them.  Or if ONE supporter/representative stopped by to ask to place a lawn sign (which we probably wouldn’t put in our yard), we’d be okay with that, too.  Or if after ONE phone call where they made contact with us, they’d stop calling.  Or if after ONE returned mailing they left us alone.  At this point, if we were originally going to vote for the Democrat, we’d probably choose to vote for the Republican because they have left us alone.

 
Although it is the middle of the summer, we’ve had a couple of bad days here lately.  Actually, things haven’t been too bad, but bad things always equal money.  Here’s the list of what’s been going on:

1. My car was pronounced dead this summer.  It’s still at my in-laws, awaiting donation (meaning tax deduction).  The overdrive went out in the transmission, and it was a choice of repairing it for $3000, or putting that money toward a new car.  We’ll get the new car.  It only had 170,000 miles on it.
2. My wife’s car continues its decline.  We’ll be buying a car soon (we have two cars, her Impala and my Expedition, so we don’t need another car immediately).
3. The air conditioning went out in our house, just following the hottest weather of the summer–but before the hot weather returned again.  It turns out the air conditioning coil (the part in the house) gave out, letting freon escape to the atmosphere.  The original coil was apparently undersized for our 2004 house, perhaps from another construction gig.  It was $1200 to replace, but that’s better than $4000 for a new system.  We were without air from Thursday through Wednesday.  We’ve very appreciative for the air conditioning again, and we were thankful that we still had my parent’s RV trailer at our house so that we could sleep in air conditioning at night.  We were all pretty miserable over the hot days without AC.
4. My original thought was that the thermostat may have failed, because that happened to me in my old house.  I bought a cool 3M 3M50 wi-fi thermostat at Home Depot for $99.  The first one fried, the second one was inoperable (it was an opened item that I thought I would try), and I couldn’t get the third one to consistently hook up to the Internet connection.  As a result, I’ll be taking it back.  But it would have been so great to be able to control the thermostat (and monitor house temperature) from anywhere with an Internet connection.  I wasted most of a day playing with the thermostat and driving back and forth to Home Depot.
5. Josh’s baseball team was knocked out at state, by teams they had beaten, because those other teams had better run differentials.  Go tell a bunch of 11 year olds (and their parents who were watching the games in 100 degree heat) that even though they beat those other teams, they’re still in and you aren’t.  My wife was a real trooper–she went to every game, even losing an entire day to storms, waiting nearby at the Mall of America in case they could get a game in.  I hope my stepson realizes how good she is to him.  I’m pretty sure my parents would have dropped me off and let me fend on my own until after the games, had I ever been in anything like that.
6. I just found out that my rear brake cylinder on my motorcycle is blown and needs to be repaired.  I have no idea how much it will cost, and my favorite dealer closed last year.  The closest dealers are quite a distance away (even if we still lived in Cottage Grove), and one of them I won’t go to because of the fiasco with buying our truck last year (reminder: Tousley Ford–do NOT shop there).
7. I removed the wood retaining wall in our backyard.  We’ll be having a retaining wall replaced in our yard and the back yard graded out to make it inline with the neighbor’s yards (I wrote about this in my previous post).  I asked the original builder if they would consider leveling out the yard based on their shoddy workmanship on that retaining wall, and I never heard anything back from them.  So another company to avoid: JT Earthworks.

We bought our house in January of 2010. When we bought the house, we knew that there were several projects that were going to need to happen. First, the basement isn’t finished. Second, the garage needs to be finished so that we can install a heater in there (for very cold days, or to work in the garage in the winter). Third, there is a retaining wall off our house that was falling down (it turns out it has collapsed twice since it was installed in 2004). And finally, the previous owners spent $10,000 extending the back yard (which falls off into a steep ravine). This wall was made out of wood, and was already starting to show signs of warping.

Last summer, we received a lot of rain. A number of sink holes started appearing at the wood retaining wall or six feet back from the retaining wall. I attempted to fill in the sink holes with rock, and then with black dirt and new grass. By the end of June, most of those holes were back, with friends. So I made a decision…it was time for that wood wall to go.

So, at the beginning of the month of July, I started removing the wall. I used a chainsaw (even buying three additional blades at Menard’s), a circular saw (only for a bit, it wasn’t effective), and then bought a cheap reciprocating saw at Menard’s for the rest of the project. I also used three types of shovels, two sizes of sledge hammers, and a wheelbarrow.

The retaining wall was designed in such a way that nothing was cemented into the ground. The company that installed the retaining wall put two small 2x4s at the bottom of each 6×6 post, making a small T, and making the posts extremely difficult to dig out.

I found out that the company that installed the wall also made some mistakes. I’m sure they told the previous owner not to use a wood wall, but in building it, they ran the skid loader parallel to the wall, causing it to bow out. They then ran horizontal beams (90 degrees to the wall) back into the yard, putting another 3′ vertical post at the end of the new horizontal beam. To make matters worse, when they installed the drain tile, it didn’t lie flat and looped over every horizontal beam, making the drain tile look like a series of lower case w’s. There was no way that water was going to drain, and it didn’t, causing a wood wall to begin to fail (and bow out) much earlier than it should have. I also found out that there was no class 5-base under the gravel layer, and that the drain tile, when laid on the gravel (and not looped over the horizontal beams), was not buried in gravel, either. It was buried directly in top soil. This is also a no-no when building a retaining wall.

I was originally going to leave those horizontal beams, and took out all of the wall, minus two posts that I couldn’t get out (I cut them off below dirt level). Then I noticed that the sink holes 6 feet back from the wall were in direct relation to the horizontal beams running back into the lawn. If I were to leave the beams, the lawn would continue to erode along those beams, so they had to come out, too.

Meanwhile, we’ve had a hot summer this year, with several days in the high 90s and even 100s. I didn’t work much on those days.

Just yesterday, I finished taking the green-treated lumber to a container corporation, and my part of the project is over. We’re going to have another company come and build a retaining wall (properly) off the house, and level out the “new” backyard between our yard and the neighbor’s, and we’ll plant grass seed. One of my neighbors does lawn irrigation, so after our yard is landscaped, he will reinstall our sprinkler line in the back yard, and we’ll be good to go.

It will feel good to have these two major projects done, and to have the house “that much closer” to being perfect.

After this is all paid for, we will be finishing our basement and the garage (probably garage first, because that is where we will be storing what we currently store in our basement). Then we may do some minor remodeling in the future…perhaps granite countertops or some upgrades in the bathrooms–but for the most part, we’ll have our dream house.

Here are some pictures of the project for your enjoyment:

Old (collapsing) brick retaining wall that will be replaced with a 2-tier system

This is what the wood retaining wall looked like before demolition.

At one point, the wood retaining wall was braced to a tree!

The drain tile was looped over horizontal beams at installation, not laid flat over a gravel bed, nor buried in gravel. The drain tile couldn't possibly drain.

Another view, of the drain tile, on left, "pinched flat" over a horizontal support beam.

To dig out the horizontal beams, I had to go five feet down, six feet back from the wall.

The wood retaining wall, gone. Just an extended yard, four feet deep at points (from the original ground level)

As a final note, the company that installed this wall was J.T. Earthworks in Hudson, WI.  The company did a lot of earthwork in this neighborhood as it was built.  I contacted the company, via e-mail and a written letter (the written letter also contained pictures).  In the communication, I asked the company if they would be willing to grade out the back yard–not rebuild the wall–based upon the construction issues.  I did not hear back from the company.  As we are the new owners, I cannot expect the company to “provide results in customer satisfaction,” but I thought they would also want to do the right thing–or at least contact me in response to my e-mail or letter.  If you have to consider J.T. Earthworks for a project, I cannot recommend them to you.

I’ve been awfully quiet about the diet, and that’s because I fell off the wagon. I was nearing 300 pounds again, and had basically been eating everything in sight.

My wife and I have had many discussions about weight over the years we’ve been together (we just celebrated 5 years since we’ve been engaged). One of my strong beliefs–when I’m “on the wagon”–is that I have an addition to food. Eating makes me psychologically happy. I like to be full, and I love to eat sugary foods.

Just like an alcoholic cannot return to drinking, I need to not return to eating “regularly” (which is actually “abnormally”) again.

About three weeks ago, following our Spring Break (March 20th), I decided that I needed to go “Back in the Saddle Again.”

Things are going well…The first week I lost six pounds, the second week I lost two more pounds, and this week I lost five pounds. That means I’m down thirteen pounds to 283, the same “low” I had before falling off the wagon the last time.

A typical day of eating for me looks like this:

Breakfast: a good helping of steel cut oats, prepared in a crockpot (or microwaved from a previous day’s crockpot) with honey, raisins, and cinnamon. I also have a large glass of Orange Juice mixed with cherry juice concentrate.

Lunch: A turkey and provolone sandwich on whole wheat bread and a banana.

Snack #1: A few handfuls of raw almonds on the way home.

Dinner: Whatever Liz makes. We go out for Tacos at a local taco place on Tuesdays. They have a “healthy” chicken taco which we love.

Snack #2: A bowlful of Snyder’s pretzels and raisins.

Additionally: a few cans of Coke Zero every day, and coffee if I make it at school. I also usually have a Flintstones vitamin every morning.

That’s pretty much the meal plan. I haven’t counted calories, and I’m not going to. it would be great to have a mid-morning snack, but my teaching schedule doesn’t allow for it. I know the Coke Zero isn’t great for me, and the aspartame may actually block weight loss. Even so, it’s my “sweet” fix that allows me to keep going. I have switched from bottles (24oz six packs) to cans, which ultimately lessens my intake of pop, and also is less expensive overall (the cans last longer, meaning the dollar stretches further). Eventually, I’ll start weaning off the Coke Zero, but for now, I’m holding on as I continue to adapt to eating right.

I’ve also gone to the club and worked out nearly daily, missing two days over the past three weeks. I rotate what I do. Every third day, I hit an elliptical hard for 30 minutes. The other days I either ride a bike for 30 minutes, or walk on a treadmill. The treadmill is actually the hardest, because it is the most boring. I haven’t begun working on muscle-toning at this point. I will start that as my weigh approaches 260 or so. For now, it’s just getting back into moving again. In fact, as soon as this blog post is finished, I’m going to the club (It’s one of those small 24-hour club chains).

My wife has done a fantastic job of cooking healthy meals for dinner. She’s been following a dinner plan called e-mealz, which both gives you healthy dinners and bases those dinners off of what is on sale at your local grocer of choice (we shop at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in a local town). We’ve both eaten more different meals–including fish–than we’ve eaten our entire lives. My stepson doesn’t approve of the healthy choices–but Liz is holding true to her goal of cooking and providing in that fashion for our family. I’m very appreciative of that, and I’m lucky to be married to a woman who (most of the time) enjoys planning meals and preparing them for our family, particularly as I come home tired and hungry, which translates to being cranky.

So–back in the saddle again. Or as YOAD would say it, “Making a “U-Turn.”

Ironically, it wasn’t long after I had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t just “open” to having another child, but that it would be a good thing–something I was really looking forward to.

Eight weeks later, my wife and I went to the clinic for the first ultrasound. To our dismay, the doctor (not just a technician) couldn’t find any baby. All we could see was an empty gestational sac. We hadn’t told many people that we were expecting–and Liz had mentioned her fears several days before we went that something was wrong with the pregnancy.

The process of losing what was no longer a “viable” pregnancy began a few days later–something that I learned was an ongoing experience rather than a one-time event. It was also a little scary because my wife lost a baby with her previous husband, and that event nearly killed her. I think we were both fearful that a similar situation would occur with this situation–it didn’t.

I don’t know how to summarize my feelings about the loss of this child–and I may never be able to do so. I had to leave school at one point to be with Liz (“had to ” equals “wanted” as much as “obligated) and told a co-worker why I had to leave–and that co-worker then spread the news. I was blown away by the number of co-workers and even parents of students who reached out to express their sympathy–and many who stepped forward to talk about their own lost children.

One thing I had to deal with was my own “theology” about when life begins. It’s always been an intellectual point with me, but this is the first time in my life I’ve had to literally deal with the question. Obviously, as a conservative evangelical Christian, I believe that life begins at conception. We had a baby that was conceived–and that didn’t “make it.” So it absolutely blows my mind away–and makes me incredibly sad to think that there is a person–fully developed and adult–standing in the presence of God at this very moment who is my child and who I will not know until I also get to heaven. These are the things, I believe, that happen in our lives–including the deaths of those we love (grandparents, parents, spouses, friends) that help us prepare to leave this earth someday. Meanwhile, when you’re young, you try to avoid heaven as long as humanly possible.

My wife has blogged about this event as well…her blog is much more about the experience rather than the theological ramifications of the loss of our child. This just goes to show that every person processes life in different ways.